The Odessa File

7

CHRISTMAS DAY was on the Wednesday of that week, and it was not until after the Christmas period that the man in West Ger many who had received the news from Berlin about Miller passed it on. When he did so, it was to his ultimate superior.

The man who took the call thanked his informant, put the office phone down, leaned back in his comfortable leather-padded executive chair, and gazed out of the window at the snow-covered rooftops of the Old Town.

“Verdammt and once again verdammt,” he whispered. “Why now, of all times?

Why now?” To all the citizens of his city who knew him, he was a clever and brilliantly successful lawyer in private practice. To the score of his senior executive officers scattered across West Germany and West Berlin, he was the chief executive inside Germany of the Odessa. His telephone number was unlisted, and his code name was the Werwolf.

Unlike the monster-figure of the mythology of Hollywood and the horror films of Britain and America, the German Werwolf is not an odd man who grows hairs on the backs of his hands during the full moon. In old Germanic mythology the Werwolf is a patriotic figure who stays behind in the homeland when the Teuton warrior-heroes have been forced to flee into exile by the invading foreigner, and who leads the resistance against the invader from the shadows of the great forests, striking by night and disappearing, leaving only the spoor of the wolf in the snow.

At the end of the war a group of SS officers, convinced that the destruction of the invading Allies was merely a matter of months, trained and briefed a score of groups of ultrafanatical teenage boys to remain behind and sabotage the Allied occupiers. They were formed in Bavaria, then being overrun by the Americans. These were the original Werwolves. Fortunately for them, they never put their training into practice, for after discovering Dachau the GIs were just waiting for someone to start something.

When the Odessa began in the late forties to reinfiltrate West Germany, its first chief executive had been one of those who had trained the teenage Werwolves of 1945. He took the title. It had the advantage of being anonymous, symbolic, and sufficiently melodramatic to satisfy the eternal German lust for playacting. But there was nothing theatrical about the ruthlessness with which the Odessa dealt with those who crossed its plans.

The Werwolf of late 1963 was the third to hold the title and position.

Fanatic and astute, constantly in touch with his superiors in Argentina, the man watched over the interests of all former members of the SS inside West Germany, but particularly those formerly of high rank or those high on the wanted list.

He stared out of his office window and thought back to the image of SS General Glucks facing him in a Madrid hotel room more than thirty days earlier, and to the general’s warning about the vital importance of maintaining at all costs the anonymity and security of the radio-factory-owner now preparing, under the code name Vulkan, the guidance systems for the Egyptian rockets. Alone in Germany, he also knew that in an earlier part of his life Vulkan had been better known under his real name of Eduard Roschmann.

He glanced down at the jotting pad on which be bad scribbled the number of Miller’s car and pressed a buzzer on his desk. His secretary’s voice came through from the next room.

“Hilda, what was the name of that private investigator we employed last month on the divorce case?”

“One moment.” There was a sound of rustling papers as she looked up the file. “It was Memmers, Heinz Memmers.”

“Give me the telephone number, will you? No, don’t call him, just give me the number.” He noted it down beneath the number of Miller’s car, then took his finger off the intercom key.

He rose and crossed the room to a wall-safe set in a block of concrete, a part of the wall of the office.

From the safe he took a thick, heavy book and went back to his desk. Flicking through the pages, he came to the entry he wanted. There were only two Memmers listed, Heinrich and Walter. He ran his finger along the page opposite Heinrich, usually shortened to Heinz. He noted the date of birth, worked out the age of the man in late 1963, and recalled the face of the private investigator. The ages fitted. He jotted down two other numbers listed against Heinz Memmers, picked up the telephone, and asked Hilda for an outside line.

When the dialing tone came through, be dialed the number she had given him.

The telephone at the other end was picked up after a dozen rings. it was a woman’s voice. “Memmers Private Inquiries.”

“Give me Herr Memmers personally,” said the lawyer.

“May I say who’s calling?” asked the secretary brightly.

“No, just put him on the line. And hurry.” There was a pause. The tone of voice took its effect. “Yes, sir,” she said.

A minute later a gruff voice said, “Memmers.”

“Is that Herr Heinz Memmers?”

“Yes, who is that speaking?”

“Never mind my name. It is not important. Just tell me, does the number 245.718 mean anything to you?” There was dead silence on the phone, broken only by a heavy sigh as Memmers digested the fact that his SS number had just been quoted to him. The book now lying open on the Werwolf’s desk was a list of every former member of the SS.

Memmers’ voice came back, harsh with suspicion. “Should it?”

“Would it mean anything to you if I said that my own corresponding number had only five figures in it—Kamerad?” The change was electric. Five figures meant a very senior officer.

“Yes, sir,” said Memmers down the line.

“Good,” said the Werwolf.

“There’s a small job I want you to do. Some snooper has been inquiring into one of the Kameraden. I need to find out who he is.”

“Zu Befehl”—At your command—came over the phone.

“Excellent. But between ourselves Kamerad will do. After all, we are all comrades in arms.”

Memmers’ voice came back, evidently pleased by the flattery. “Yes, Kamerad.”

“All I have about the man is his car number. A Hamburg registration.”

The Werwolf read it slowly into the telephone. “Got that?”

“Yes, Kamerad.”

“I’d like you to go to Hamburg personally. I want to know the name and address, profession, family and dependents, social standing-you know, the normal rundown. How long would that take you?”

“About forty-eight hours,” said Memmers.

“Good, I’ll call you back forty-eight hours from now. One last thing. There is to be no approach made to the subject. If possible it is to be done in such a way that he does not know any inquiry has been made. Is that clear?”

“Certainly. It’s no problem.”

“When you have finished, prepare your account and give it to me over the phone when I call you. I will send you the cash by post.” Memmers expostulated.

“There will be no account, Kamerad. Not for a matter concerning the Comradeship.”

“Very well, then. I’ll call you back in two days.” The Werwolf put the phone down.

Miller set off from Hamburg the same afternoon, taking the same autobalm he had traveled two weeks earlier, past Bremen, Osnabrijck, and Munster toward Cologne and the Rhineland. This time his destination was Bonn, the small and boring town on the river’s edge that Konrad Adenauer bad chosen as the capital of the Federal Republic, because he came from it.

Just south of Bremen his Jaguar crossed Memmers’ Opel speeding north to Hamburg. Oblivious of each other, the two men flashed past on their separate missions.

It was dark when he entered the single long main street of Bonn and, seeing the white-topped peaked cap of a traffic policeman, be drew up beside him.

“Can you tell me the way to the British Embassy?” he asked the policeman.

“It will be closed in an hour,” said the policeman, a true Rhinelander.

“Then I’d better get there all the quicker,” said Miller. “Where is it?” The policeman pointed straight down the road toward the south. “Keep straight on down here, follow the tramlines. This street becomes Friedrich Ebert Allee. Just follow the tramlines. As you are about to leave Bonn and enter Bad Godesberg, you’ll see it on your left. It’s lit up and it’s got the British flag flying outside it.” Miller nodded his thanks and drove on. The British Embassy was where the policeman had said, sandwiched between a building site on the Bonn side and a football field on the other, both a sea of mud in the December fog rolling up off the river behind the embassy.

It was a long, low gray concrete building, built back-to-front, referred to by British newspaper correspondents in Bonn since it was built as “the vacuum-cleaner factory.” Miller swung off the road and parked in one of the slots provided for visitors.

He walked through the wooden-framed glass doors and found himself in a small corridor on his left, behind which sat a middle-aged receptionist. Beyond her was a small room inhabited by two blue-serge suited men who bore the unmistakable stamp of former Army sergeants.

“I would like to speak with the press attache, please,” said Miller, using his halting school English.

The receptionist looked worried. “I don’t know if he’s still here. It is Friday afternoon, you know.”

“Please try,” said Miller, and proffered his press card.

The receptionist looked at it and dialed a number on her house telephone.

Miller was in luck. The press attaché was just about to leave. He evidently asked for a few minutes to get his hat and coat back off again. Miller was shown into a small waiting room adorned by several Rowland Hilder prints of the Cotswolds in autumn. On a table lay several back copies of the Taller and brochures depicting the onward march of British industry. Within seconds, however, he was summoned by one of the ex-sergeants and led upstairs and along a corridor and shown into a small office.

The press attaché, he was glad to see, was in his midthirties and seemed eager to help. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

Miller decided to go straight into the matter. “I am investigating a story for a news magazine,” he lied. “It’s about a former SS captain, one of the worst, a man still sought by our own authorities. I believe he was also on the wanted list of the British authorities when this part of Germany was under British administration. Can you tell me how I can check whether the British ever captured him, and if so what happened to him?”

The young diplomat was perplexed. “Good Lord, I’m sure I don’t know. I mean, we handed over all our records and files to your government in nineteen forty-nine. They took over where our chaps left off. I suppose they would have all these things now.”

Miller tried to avoid mentioning that the German authorities had all declined to help. “True,” he said. “Very true. However, all my inquiries so far indicate he has never been put on trial in the Federal Republic since nineteen forty-nine. That would indicate he had not been caught since nineteen forty-nine. However, the American Document Center in West Berlin reveals that a copy of the man’s file was requested from them by the British in nineteen forty-seven. There must have been a reason for that, surely?”

“Yes, one would indeed suppose so,” said the attaché. He had evidently taken in the reference to Miller’s having procured the cooperation of the American authorities in West Berlin, and furrowed his brow in thought.

“So who on the British side would be the investigating authority during the Occupation-I mean, the administration period?”

“Well, you see, it would have been the Provost Marshal’s office of the Army at that time. Apart from Nuremberg, which were the major war-crimes trials, the separate Allies were investigating individually, although obviously we cooperated with each other. Except the Russians. These investigations led to some zonal war-crimes trials-do you follow me?”

“Yes.

“The investigations were carried out by the Provost Marshal’s department, that’s the military police, you know, and the trials were prepared by the Legal Branch. But the files of both were handed over in nineteen forty-nine. Do you see?”

“Well, yes,” said Miller, “but surely copies must have been kept by the British?”

“I suppose they were,” said the attaché. “But they’d be filed away in the archives of the Army by now.”

“Would it be possible to look at them?”

The attaché appeared shocked. “Oh, I very much doubt it. I don’t think so.

I suppose bona fide research scholars might be able to make an application to see them, but it would take a long time. And I don’t think a reporter would be allowed to see them-no offense meant, you understand?”

“I understand,” said Miller.

“The point is,” resumed the attaché earnestly, “that, well, you’re not exactly official, are you? And one doesn’t wish to upset the German authorities, does one?”

“Certainly not.” The attaché rose. “I don’t think there’s really much the embassy can do to help you.”

“Okay. One last thing. Was there anybody here then who is still here now?”

“On the embassy staff? Oh, dear me, no. No, they’ve all changed many times.”

He escorted Miller to the door. “Wait a minute, there’s Cadbury. I think he was here then. He’s been here for ages, I do know that.”

“Cadbury?” said Miller.

“Anthony Cadbury. The foreign correspondent. He’s the sort of senior British press chap here. Married a German girl. I think he was here after the war, just after. You might ask him.”

“Fine,” said Miller. “I’ll try him. Where do I find him?”

“Well, its Friday now,” said the attaché. “He’ll probably be at his favorite place by the bar in the Cercle Frangais later on. Do you know it?”

“No, I’ve never been here before.”

“Ah, yes, well, it’s a restaurant, run by the French, you know. Jolly good food, too. It’s very popular. It’s in Bad Godesberg, just down the road.”

Miller found it, a hundred yards from the bank of the Rhine on a road called Ann Scbwimmbad. The barman knew Cadbury well but had not seen him that evening. He told Miller if the doyen of the British foreign correspondents’ corps in Bonn was not in that evening, he would almost certainly be there for prelunch drinks the following day.

Miller checked into the Dreesen Hotel down the road, a great turn-of-the-century edifice that had formerly been Adolf Hitler’s favorite hotel in Germany, the place he had picked to meet Neville Chamberlain of Britain for their first meeting in 1938. He dined at the Cercle Franqais and dawdled over his coffee, hoping Cadbury would turn up. But by eleven the Englishman bad not put in an appearance, so he went back to the hotel to sleep.

Cadbury walked into the bar of the Cercle Frangais a few minutes before twelve the following morning, greeted a few acquaintances, and seated himself on his favorite comer stool at the bar. When he had taken his first sip of his Ricard, Miller rose from his table by the window and came over.

“Mr. Cadbury?”

The Englishman turned and surveyed him. He had smooth-brushed white hair coming back from what had evidently once been a very handsome face. The skin was still healthy, with a fine tracery of tiny veins on the surface of each cheek. The eyes were bright blue under shaggy gray eyebrows. He surveyed Miller warily. “Yes.”

“My name is Miller. Peter Miller. I am a reporter from Hamburg. May I talk with you a moment, please?”

Anthony Cadbury gestured to the stool beside him. “I think we had better talk in German, don’t you?” he said, dropping into the language.

Miller was relieved that he could go back to his own language, and it must have showed.

Cadbury grinned. “What can I do for you?”

Miller glanced at the shrewd eyes and backed a hunch. Starting at the beginning, he told Cadbury the story from the moment of Tauber’s death. The London man was a good listener. He did not interrupt once. When Miller had finished he gestured to the barman to fill his own Ricard and bring another beer for Miller.

“Sputenbrau, wasn’t it?” he asked.

Miller nodded and poured the fresh beer to a foaming head on top of the glass.

“Cheers,” said Cadbury. “Well, now, you’ve got quite a problem. I must say I admire your nerve.”

“Nerve?” said Miller.

“It’s not quite the most popular story to investigate among your countrymen in their present state of mind,” said Cadbury, “as you will doubtless find out in course of time.”

“I already have,” said Miller.

“Mmm. I thought so,” said the Englishman and grinned suddenly. “A spot of lunch? My wife’s away for the day.”

Over lunch Miller asked Cadbury if he had been in Germany at the end of the war.

“Yes, I was a war correspondent. Much younger then, of course. About your age. I came in with Montgomery’s army. Not to Bonn, of course. No one had heard of it then. The headquarters was at Luneburg. Then I just sort of stayed on. Covered the end of the war, signature of the surrender and all that; then the paper asked me to remain.”

“Did you cover the zonal war-crimes trials?” asked Miller.

Cadbury transferred a mouthful of fillet steak and nodded while he chewed.

“Yes. All the ones held in the British Zone. We had a specialist come over for the Nuremberg Trials. That was the American Zone, of course. The star criminals in our zone were Josef Kramer and Irma Grese. Heard of them?”

“No, never.”

“Well, they were called the Beast and Beastess of Belsen. I invented the titles, actually. They caught on. Did you hear about Belsen?”

“Only -vaguely,” said Miller. “My generation wasn’t told much about all that. Nobody wanted to tell us anything.”

Cadbury shot him a shrewd glance under his bushy eyebrows. “But you want to know now?”

“We have to know sooner or later. May I ask you something? Do you hate the Germans?”

Cadbury chewed for a few minutes, considering the question seriously. “Just after the discovery of Belsen, a crowd of journalists attached to the British Army went up for a look. I’ve never been so sickened in my life, and in war you see a few terrible things. But nothing like Belsen. I think at that moment, yes, I hated them all.”

“And now?”

“No. Not any longer. Let’s face it, I married a German girt in nineteen forty-eight. I still live here. I wouldn’t if I still felt the way I did in nineteen forty-five. I’d have gone back to England long ago.”

“What caused the change?”

“Time. The passage of time. And the realization that not all Germans were Josef Kramers. Or-what was his name, Roschmann? Or Roschmanns. Mind you, I still can’t get over a sneaking sense of mistrust for people of my own generation among your nation.”

“And my generation?” Miller twirled his wineglass and gazed at the light refracting through the red liquid.

“They’re better,” said Cadbury. “Let’s face it, you have to be better.”

“Will you help me with the Roschmann inquiry? Nobody else will.”

“If I can,” said Cadbury. “What do you want to know?”

“Do you recall him being put on trial in the British Zone?” Cadbury shook his head. “No. Anyway, you said he was Austrian by birth.

Austria was also under four power occupation at the time. But I’m certain there was no trial against Roschmann in the British Zone of Germany. I’d remember the name if there were.”

“But why would the British authorities request a photocopy of his career from the Americans in Berlin?”

Cadbury thought for a moment. “Roschmann must have come to the attention of the British in some way. At that time nobody knew about Riga. The Russians were at the height of their obstinacy in the late forties. They didn’t give us any information from the east. Yet that was where the overwhelming majority of the worst crimes of mass murder took place. So we were in the odd position of having about eighty per cent of the crimes against humanity committed east of what is now the Iron Curtain, and the ones responsible for them were about ninety per cent in the three western zones. Hundreds of guilty men slipped through our hands because we knew nothing about what they had done a thousand miles to the east.”

“But if an inquiry was made about Roschmann in nineteen forty-seven, he must have come to our attention somehow.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Miller. “Where would one start to look, among the British records?”

“Well, we can start with my own files. They’re back at my house. Come on, it’s a short walk.” Fortunately, Cadbury was a methodical man and had kept every one of his dispatches from the end of the war onward. His study was lined with file boxes along two walls. Besides these, there were two gray filing cabinets in one comer.

“I run the office from my home,” he told Miller as they entered the study.

“This is my own filing system, and I’m about the only one who understands it. Let me show you.” He gestured to the filing cabinets. “One of these is stuffed with files on people, listed under the names in alphabetical order.

The other concerns subjects, listed under subject headings, alphabetically.

We’ll start with the first one. Look under Roschmann.” It was a brief search. There was no folder with Roschmann’s name on it.

“All right,” said Cadbury. “Now let’s try subject headings. There are four that might help. There’s one called Nazis, another labeled SS. Then there’s a very large section headed Justice, which has subsections, one of which contains clippings about trials that have taken place. But they’re mostly criminal trials that have taken place in West Germany since nineteen forty-nine. The last one that might help is about war crimes. Lees start going through them.” Cadbury read faster than Miller, but it took them until nightfall to wade through the hundreds of clippings in all four files. Eventually Cadbury rose with a sigh, closed the War Crimes file, and replaced it in its proper place in the filing cabinet.

“I’m afraid I have to go out to dinner tonight,” he said. “The only things left to look through are these.” He gestured to the box files on shelves along two of the walls.

Miller closed the file he had been searching. “What are those?”

“Those,” said Cadbury, “are nineteen years of dispatches from me to the paper. That’s the top row. Below them are nineteen years of clippings from the paper of news stories and articles about Germany and Austria.

Obviously a lot in the first set are repeated in the second. Those are my pieces that were printed. But there are other pieces in the second set that were not from me. After all, other contributors have had pieces printed in the paper as well. And some of the stuff I sent was not used.

“There are about six boxes of clippings per year. That’s quite a lot to get through. Fortunately its Sunday tomorrow, so we can use the whole day if you like.”

“It’s very kind of you to take so much trouble,” said Miller.

Cadbury shrugged. “I had nothing else to do this weekend. Anyway, weekends in late December in Bonn are hardly full of gaiety. My wife’s not due back till tomorrow evening. Meet me for a drink in the Cercle Francais about eleven-thirty.”

It was in the middle of Sunday afternoon that they found it. Anthony Cadbury was nearing the end of the box file labeled November-December 1947 of the set that contained his own dispatches. He suddenly shouted, “Eureka,” eased back the spring clip, and took out a single sheet of paper, long since faded, typewritten and headed “December 23, 1947.”

“No wonder it wasn’t used in the paper,” he said. “No one would have wanted to know about a captured SS man just before Christmas. Anyway, with the shortage of newsprint in those days, the Christmas Eve edition must have been tiny.” He laid the sheet on the writing desk and shone the Anglepoise lamp onto it. Miller leaned over to read it.

Miller read the brief dispatch four or five times. “Christ,” he breathed. “You got him.”

“I think this calls for a drink,” said Cadbury.

When he had made the call to Memmers on Friday morning, the Werwolf had overlooked the fact that forty-eight hours later it would be Sunday.

Despite this, he tried to call to Memmers’ office from his home on Sunday, just as the two men in Bad Godesberg made their discovery. There was no reply.

But Memmers was in the office the following morning at nine sharp. The call from the Werwolf came through at half past.

“So glad you called, Kamerad,” said Memmers. “I got back from Hamburg late last night.”

“You have the information?”

“Certainly. If you would like to note it?”

“Go ahead,” said the voice on the phone.

In his office Memmers cleared his throat and began to read from his notes.

“The owner of the car is a freelance reporter, one Peter Miller.

Description: aged twenty-nine, just under six feet tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Has a widowed mother who lives in Osdorf, just outside Hamburg. He himself lives in an apartment close to the Steindamm in central Hamburg.” Memmers read off Miller’s address and telephone number. “He lives there with a girl, a striptease dancer, Miss Sigrid Rahn. He works mainly for the picture magazines. Apparently does very well. Specializes in investigative journalism. Like you said, Kamerad, a snooper.”

“Any idea who commissioned him on his latest inquiry?” asked the Werwolf.

“No, that’s the funny thing. Nobody seems to know what he is doing at the moment. Or for whom he is working. I checked with the girl, claiming to be from the editorial office of a big magazine. Only by phone, you understand. She said she did not know where he was, but she expected a call from him this afternoon, before she goes to work.”

“Anything else?”

“Just the car. It’s very distinctive. A black Jaguar, British model, with a yellow stripe down the side. A sports car, two-seater, fixed-head coupe, called the XK one-fifty. I checked his local garage.” The Werwolf digested this. “I want to try and find out where he is now,” he said at length.

“He’s not in Hamburg now,” said Memmers hastily. “He left on Friday about lunchtime, just as I was arriving. He spent Christmas there. Before that he was away somewhere else.”

“I know,” said the Werwolf.

“I could find out what story he is inquiring about,” said Memmers helpfully. “I did not inquire too closely, because you said you did not want him to discover he was being asked about.”

“I know what story he is working on. Exposing one of our comrades.” The Werwolf thought for a minute. “Could you find out where he is now?” he asked.

“I think so,” said Memmers. “I could call the girl back this afternoon, pretend I was from a big magazine and needed to contact Miller urgently. She sounded a simple girl on the phone.”

“Yes, do that,” said the Werwolf. “I’ll call you at four this afternoon.”

That Monday morning Cadbury was down in Bonn, where a ministerial press conference was scheduled.

He rang Miller at the Dreesen Hotel at ten-thirty.

“Glad to get you before you left,” he told the German. “I’ve got an idea. It might help you. Meet me at the Cercle Frangais this afternoon around four.” Just before lunch Miller rang Sigi and told her he was at the Dreesen.

When they met, Cadbury ordered tea. “I had an idea while not listening to that wretched conference this morning,” he told Miller. “If Roschmann was captured and identified as a wanted criminal, his case would have come under the eyes of the British legal officials in our zone of Germany at the time. All files were copied and passed between the British, French, and Americans in both Germany and Austria at that time. Have you ever beard of a man called Lord Russell of Liverpool?”

“No, never,” said Miller.

“He was the Legal Adviser to the British Military Governor during the occupation. Later he wrote a book called The Scourge of the Swastika. You can imagine what it was about. Didn’t make him terribly popular in Germany, but it was quite accurate. About atrocities.”

“He’s a lawyer?” asked Miller.

“He was,” said Cadbury. “A very brilliant one. He’s retired now, lives in Wimbledon. I don’t know if he’d remember me, but I could give you a letter of introduction.”

“Would he remember so far back?”

“He might. He’s not a young man any more, but he was reputed to have a memory like a filing cabinet. If the case of Roschmann was ever referred to him to prepare a prosecution, he’d remember every detail of it.

I’m sure of that ” Miller nodded and sipped his tea. “Yes, I could fly to London to talk to him.”

Cadbury reached into his pocket and produced an envelope. “I’ve written the letter already.” He handed Miller the letter of introduction and stood up. “Good luck.”

Memmers had the information for the Werwolf when the latter called just after four.

“His girl friend got a call from him,” said Memmers. “He’s in Bad Godesberg, staying at the Dreesen Hotel.” The Werwolf put the phone down and thumbed through an address book.

Eventually he fixed on a name, picked up the phone again, and called a number in the Bonn-Bad Godesberg area.

Miller went back to the hotel to call Cologne airport and book a flight to London for the following day, Tuesday, December 31. As he reached the reception desk the girl behind the counter smiled brightly and pointed to the open seating area in the bay window overlooking the Rhine.

“There’s a gentleman to see you, Herr Miller.” He glanced toward the groups of tapestry-backed chairs set around various tables in the window alcove. In one of them a middle-aged man in a black winter coat, holding a black Homburg and a rolled umbrella, sat waiting.

Miller strolled over, puzzled as to Who could have known he was there.

“You wanted to see me?” Miller asked.

The man sprang to his feet. “Herr Miller?”

“Yes.”

“Herr Peter Miller?”

“Yes.

The man inclined his head in the short, jerky bow of old-fashioned Germans. “My name is Schmidt. Doctor Schmidt.”

“What can I do for you?” Dr. Schmidt smiled deprecatingly and gazed out of the flowed under the fairy lights of the deserted terrace.

“I am told you are a journalist. Yes? A freelance journalist. A very good one.” He smiled brightly.

“You have a reputation for being very thorough, very tenacious.” Miller remained silent, waiting for him to get to the point.

“Some friends of mine heard you are presently engaged on an inquiry into events that happened-well, let us say, a long time ago. A very long time ago.” Miller stiffened and his mind raced, trying to work out who the “friends” were and who could have told them. Then he realized he had been asking questions about Roschmann all over the country.

“An inquiry about a certain Eduard Roschmann.” And he said tersely, “So?”

“Ah yes, about Captain Roschmann. I just thought I might be able to help you.” The man swiveled his eyes back from the river and fixed them kindly on Miller. “Captain Roschmann is dead.”

“Indeed?” said Miller. “I didn’t know.”

Dr. Schmidt seemed delighted. “Of course not. There’s no reason why you should. But it is true nevertheless. Really, you are wasting your time.”

Miller looked disappointed. “Can you tell me when he died?” he asked the doctor.

“You have not discovered the circumstances of his death?” the man asked.

“No. The last trace of him I can find was in late April nineteen forty-five. He was seen alive then.”

“Ah yes, of course.” Dr. Schmidt seemed happy to oblige. “He was killed, you know, shortly after that. He returned to his native Austria and was killed fighting against the Americans in early nineteen forty-five. His body was identified by several people who had known him in life.”

“He must have been a remarkable man,” said Miller.

Dr. Schmidt nodded in agreement. “Well, yes, some thought so. Yes indeed, some of us thought so.”

“I mean,” continued Miller as if the interruption had not occurred, “he must have been remarkable to be the first man since Jesus Christ to have risen from the dead.

He was captured alive by the British on December twentieth, nineteen forty-seven, at Graz in Austria.”

The doctor’s eyes reflected the glittering snow along the balustrade outside the window. “Miller, you are being very foolish. Very foolish indeed. Permit me to give you a word of advice, from an older man to a much, much younger one. Drop this inquiry.”

Miller eyed him. “I suppose I ought to thank you,” he said without gratitude.

“If you will take my advice, perhaps you ought,” said the doctor.

“You misunderstand me again,” said Miller. “Roschmann was also seen alive in mid-October this year in Hamburg. The second sighting was not confirmed. Now it is. You just confirmed it.”

“I repeat, you are being very foolish if you do not drop this inquiry.”

The doctor’s eyes were as cold as ever, but there was a hint of anxiety in them. There had been a time when people did not reject his orders, and he had never quite got used to the change.

Miller began to get angry, a slow glow of anger working up from his collar to his face. “You make me sick, Herr Doktor,” he told the older man. “You and your kind, your whole stinking gang. You have a respectable facade, but you are filth on the face of my country. So far as I am concerned, I’ll go on asking questions till I find him.” He turned to go, but the elder man grabbed his arm. They stared at each other from a range of two inches.

“You’re not Jewish, Miller. You’re Aryan. You’re one of us. What did we ever do to you, for God’s sake, what did we ever do to you?”

Miller jerked his arm free. “If you don’t know yet, Herr Doktor, you’ll never understand.”

“Ach, you people of the younger generation, you’re the same. Why can you never do what you’re told?”

“Because that’s the way we are. Or at least it’s the way I am.” The older man stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re not stupid, Miller. But you’re behaving as if you were. As if you were one of these ridiculous creatures constantly governed by what they call their conscience. But I’m beginning to doubt that. It’s almost as if you had something personal in this matter.”

Miller turned to go. “Perhaps I have,” he said and walked away across the lobby.